The way it is now, I get a current reading of ~2.9, but I rarely measure more than 3 A off a single cell due to wire resistance. I am pretty sure if I had low resistance/short leads it would be higher.
To be clear, I stacked 6x r500’s, and had a measured 2.72A. Adding a wire to the resistors raised current to as high as my DMM reads, and a higher ceiling bounce.
Genuine 7135 based driver vould be zillion times easier to mode just by addig few current regulator chips, I can do that, everyone can do that…
also this driver looks like it is missing quite a few components (empty soldering pads) which is characteristic of cheap and not well made drivers…
Good info. Thanks again. I will mimic your mod and report back. Hopefully, by end of day tomorrow. I got to decide if I want dedome. I like the big hot spot. So I probably won’t.
Well I removed the resistors I had mounted and shorted them with some copper. Def direct drive on high. Modes still work. Brighter with a tf flame 26650 than a sanyo 18650.
Also, a 58mm ar lens from Kaidomain fits. Measurable difference in brightness.
Eagerly waiting for my king Kong’s……
Great to hear. I didn’t get to the JM26 tonight. Got hung up working on my TN31. Sounds like you getting that light into nice shape.
Finally started working on the JM26 tonight. I now see that I misunderstood one of your questions. You asked how I measured current. I thought you were asking a general newb type question. I now see that you meant that question specific to this light. It was awkward and fiddly for me to measure too. I apologize for talking below your level of knowledge.
So, about what I was able fnd out tonight. Unfortunately, I pretty much got the same results as you. I didn’t have enough time to do everything that needed to be done. So I cut some corners in the interest of figuring out what is going on in that driver. Here is what I know and need to to find out:
* I had the stock somewhat thin emitter wires still in place as I did not have time to clean all that gunk of the driver to resolder new heavy gauge wires.
* The springs have not been copper braided. Definitely needed as the tail spring is big, but thin. The driver spring is fairly long too.
I dropped in a Moli IMR26700 (capable of delivering 40 amps continuous new. I don’t know the condition of the one I used tonight). Got an emitter reading of 3.15 amps. That higher reading to me indicates that resistance may be restricting current. And this cell was able to overcome some of it. Another thing restricting current is the XML2. They are hard to drive much over 4 amps in a 1S setup.
Still, I think that the driver may itself be restricting current. It just seems I should have had higher readings. I will fix the above resistance points and remeasure first. If current is still low, then we will need someone that knows more to help us finish modding this driver.
I already swapped a 20mm noctigon xml2 u2 into mine. Also polished the base of the light as best I could. In order to prevent shorting on the reflector I used kapton tape. Appears to work fine. Also used 22 gauge wire for the emitter and put copper braid on the tail cap spring. Compared to my convoy m1 with ~4.5A qlite, xml2 with ncr18650pd, the brightness level is a little less. Very comparable though. I wish I had an easy way to measure emitter current…….
That is good news about the light output being close to your M1. I wish I had measured lux when the light was stock. So maybe it’s just resistance that is holding the current back in my light.
Aren’t the wires between the emitter base and the reflector making the emitter sit too low in your reflector?
EDIT: Measuring at the emitter is fairly easy on this light because the emitters wires are not wound up in the pill. Just do the following:
There you go. You’re set up to test. Hold or solder the short wires against your DMM leads, turn on your DMM, and turn on your light. If you have cheap DMM leads, you can instead make the two short wires above long enough to connect directly to your DMM. Use something to wedge them snug in the ports.
I was using a .1 Ohm resistor in line with the emitter to measure voltage drop……Maybe I’ll try just using my dmm inline.
When I swapped the stock emitter out and put in the 20mm XML2 U2, id did get brighter, but I’ll have to check and see if the emitter is too deep. Maybe I’ll get more. I can only test brightness with a ceiling bounce, but it went from ~70 to ~75 swapping emitters. That was after I had boosted current but not direct drive. Now its around 110 with a TF 26650 and the AR lense and shorted resistors.
Oh, I spaced out that you went to copper when I typed the above instruction. Since your base is probably no longer screwed down, make sure you don’t accidentally lift it off the pill when doing the test.
I’m going to swap an XML emitter into my light. It’s just too hard to drive the xml2 at high currents with one cell. I have some xml u2 3c’s I want to try.
EDIT: You put in an AR lens? Sweet.
I finally changed to 18ga emitter wires, copper braided the springs, and changed to xml (from xml2). I also replaced the big solder blob on the sensor resister bank to copper braid. Current at the emitter only went up to 3.65 amps. So, something else in the driver is holding back current. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough electronics knowledge to figure it out.
There is another bank of resistors. I don’t know their purpose. They may also have a parallel capacitor. I can’t see the traces well for that. The resistor bank is connected to one leg of the inductor and also to the positive led wire. The labels on the resistors are as follows:
103 (10,000 ohms)
391 (390 ohms)
911 (910 ohms)
EDIT: I’m thinking the first resistor is not part of the same bank as it is so far off from the other two. If they are one parallel bank, the resultant resistance from the above parallel resistors is about 168 ohms. Anyone have an idea what this bank of resistors does?
I received JM26 today, pretty disappointed, a lot of sharp edges, crooked laser engraving, lot of hieroglyphs in user manual, battery tube doesn’t screw in completely, pulls only 1.8A from fully charged unprotected battery :Sp
Sirius9 - Sorry to hear about that. Where did you order from if you don't mind mentioning?
I ordered from wallbuys, I was expecting old AMC based driver which I could easily upgrade to 3+A but they changed the driver in the meantime 
Spare glass is nice touch, although, not AR coated …
Retaining ring that holds the driver won’t budge |(
Yeah it is a bitch.
^ LOL. Yeah, it was hard to remove for me too. I used a ice pick type thing, and tapped it with a file. Breaks loose real easy that way.
By the way, that driver is way easier than a 7135 type driver to increase over 3 amps. Just solder a glob over the sense resistors identified above. Way, way, way easier than soldering on 7135's.
I have some KK ICR’s charging right now, I’m gonna see how much more current I have with those over my 18650’s.
I measured 1.8A with 18650 battery (don’t have KK right now or any other 26650) but that is obviously not battery limitation because I tried it with FF Warrior and it was pulling 4A happily from that single battery…
I’ll try to fabricate some tool for that ring tomorrow.
I need to apologize Sirius9. Bdiddle's comment did crack me up just due to its absurdity. I didn't mean to appear that I was laughing at you. I wasn't. Thank you for being the bigger man and not taking offense to it in your response.
That retaining ring was screwed down way tight on my light. It also has very small holes. So I couldn't use pliers. I bent a couple sets of tweezers before I realized I was not going to get it off that way. I ended up using a strong pick. I held it at an angle so the force of tapping it would unscrew the retaining ring. You don't need to tap hard. The taps just need to be jarring enough to break the ring loose.
Best of luck.
snap ring pliers or needle nose pliers with the tips filed thinner work great.